Seven ways to speed up the sale of your home

Unfortunately, there is no set way to sell a home. If there was, anyone could do it.

There are a few things that you as the home owner can do to ensure that you get the highest price for your home as quickly as possible.

1. Hire the right Realtor. All Realtors are not created equal. Interview several to determine if you've got the right chemistry with them and that they are knowledgeable about your neighborhood and market conditions for your type of home.
2. Trust your Realtor to help you set the right price. A properly priced home will draw attention from buyers. Remember that those buyers will also likely be using a Realtor, who also knows how to come up with the right price. Priced only slightly too high and you might get lucky, but priced way too high and people won't even give you a chance. Sellers who own their homes free and clear should remember that your home will not be worth more than the foreclosure next door or the short sale across the street. Market conditions and the condition of your home dictate prices, not how much you owe, or don't owe, on the home.
3. Clean your home! Buyers don't want to visit a messy or smelly homes. Clean the kitchen and bathrooms, make the beds, put stuff away. If you don't have room in your home, then consider renting a storage space for the duration of your listing. You need to be prepared at all times to have your home shown on short notice.
4. Have a prelisting inspection done on your home. That will provide you and your Realtor with the advantage of knowing exactly what you are selling. Then you can either have significant problems repaired or you can simply adjust the selling price and disclose those problems. Either way, your Buyers will look at you as an honest, forthright Seller, and that can't possibly hurt. If you need a good pre-listing inspection without all the fluff that so many inspectors give you, call Russel Ray. He's been in real estate for over forty years and has worked as a home inspector in San Diego since 2001. He has many different types of services to help you and works throughout the ten counties in Southern California.
5. If your home is vacant, consider having it staged. The advantage of staging is that the home looks lived in, providing buyers with visions of what they can do, without the mess that actually comes with living in a home.
6. Work with your Realtor to decide in advance contract conditions and those that you want versus those you don't want. Some Sellers -- or their Realtors -- like to choose the escrow company or the title company in the belief that working with someone they've worked with successfully in the past will make things go more smoothly during the sale of your home.
7. If market conditions are changing rapidly, listen to your Realtor to adjust the price, if necessary.

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This week's posts (they'll open in a new window): 

1. Market conditions continue to improve - 6/8/09